10. It It may be said,-"We acknowledge that all you say is reasonable and cannot well be gainsayed; but we are a business-like, a money-making, and money-loving people. We are too much occupied to consider these matters. So many other things take up our attention that we hav'n't time to examine, much less to carry out your measure; our people are not up to it yet."

We are fully aware of the prevailing tendencies of the public mind, and of the indifference and apathy with which subjects relating to health are generally regarded. It is only in times when epidemic diseases prevail, or when we are reminded of their effects by our own sufferings or losses, that we are excited and interested. We are too much inclined to consider health as a matter "belonging to the doctors and not to us," and to depend upon them for a supply; that money is best obtained and time is best employed, when the dollar is sought, and desire is gratified, without regard to the sanitary consequences of any particular mode of doing it. Some strange anomalies and inconsistencies are found in society as at present constituted.

Money-loving!"

And is this the only object of life? Are there none that overlie it? And even if it be uppermost, are we pursuing the best means to obtain it? It is true that most of us, when selecting an occupation, a place of business, a place of residence, do not inquire into its sanitary influences, as we should do if we acted wisely: if it promises money

allotted to them by the Psalmist ;-I say the providence of God is no more responsible for these things, than it is for picking pockets or stealing horses."

"Health is earned,-as literally so as any commodity in the market. Health can be accumulated, invested, made to yield its interest and its compound interest, and thus be doubled and redoubled. The capital of health, indeed, may all be forfeited by one physical misdemeanor, as a rich man may sink all his property in one bad speculation; but it is as capable of being increased as any other kind of capital; and it can be safely insured on pay ment of the reasonable premium of temperance and forethought. This, too, is a species of wealth, which is not only capable of a life-long enjoyment by its possessor, but it may be transmitted to children by a will and testament that no human judicature can set aside.” "Let the young man, then, remember, that, for every offence which he commits against the laws of health, nature will bring him into judgment. However graciously God may deal with the heart, all our experience proves that He never pardons stomach, muscles, lungs, or brain. These must expiate their offences un-vicariously. Nay, there are numerous and obvious cases of violated physical laws, where Nature, with all her diligence and severity, seems unable to scourge the offender enough during his life-time, and so she goes on plying her scourge upon his children and his children's children after him, even to the third and fourth generation. The punishment is entailed on posterity; nor human law, nor buman device, can break the entailment. And in these hereditary inflictions, nature abhors alike the primogeniture laws of England and the Salic laws of France. All the sons and all the daughters are made inheritors; not in aliquot parts; but, by a kind of malignant multiplica tion in the distemper, each inherits the whole."-Mann's Thoughts for a Young Man, pp. 14, 23, 19.

we enter into it generally with characteristic zeal, regardless of the consequences. But how often do we have to learn that we committed an error! Instead of gradually accumulating capital, while preserving and invigorating our health, in a way which would give us a more prosperous, a happier and longer life, we make a hazardous speculation and lose the whole. This is the result of ignorance. It is worse than that. It is folly and crime thus to rush recklessly into a sea of uncertainty, when safety and competence are certainly attainable otherwise. Our thoughts receive a significant illustration in an extract of a recent letter from California. "Our party," says this writer, "four months ago, consisted of six persons, of whom two only are now alive. Two died of a disease occasioned by over-exertion and improper exposure at the diggings, on the El Dorado; one of a violent fever, occurring after a scene of frolicking and dissipation in the village; and another was murdered and robbed in his lodgings, of the few thousands of gold dust, which he had gathered by hard labor, and was about to carry back to his native New England. We, who are alive, are doing tolerably well, but work at great risk of property, health and life." If these six persons had known exactly their sanitary capability and liability, and what to do and how to do it, they might have preserved their lives. They might have wrought and acted so as to have avoided the causes of disease; or, if this had been impossible, they might have had discretion enough to abandon their suicidal residence or employment. We would not discourage, but encourage, energy and perseverance in every calling, but only in subordination to higher obligations, and in strict regard to the higher duties of self-preservation and self-invigoration.

"We hav'n't time!" Indeed! but we have time for other things, for labor, for leisure, for dissipation, for almost anything we desire to pursue. And to what purpose more useful than the preservation of our lives and health can we devote a portion of our time? If time is not taken by us, and used by us, for this object, it will be taken by another agent; and we shall be prematurely deprived of an opportunity of using it ourselves for any purpose whatever. A shortened life and a

debilitated frame, will be the consequence of ignorance and inattention; a lengthened life and an invigorated constitution. of knowledge and application. In plain English, we have no time means we have no DISPOSITION. If we have a disposition to examine and carry out this measure we shall find time and ability to do it, and still have enough for other purposes. "Where there is a will there is a way;" where there is a disposition there is a time," a time for all things."

The younger portion of society may be taught the lessons of experience which the elder portions have learned during a long life, the physical calamities to which they have been exposed, the mistakes they have made, and the remedies of reparation they have used. They may be told the best course to pursue to invigorate and prolong their own existence. But how few apply this instruction as a guide to their own advancement in physical improvement! How great a proportion say, will do well enough for old people to talk so, but we are well enough as we are, we live in another age;" and they thus neglect and refuse to apply the useful instruction of others, and wait until taught by their own sad experience. They are then often too old to profit by it. They did not learn how to live, until their life-time had nearly expired.

Our people spend an indefinite amount of money in the purchase, and of time in the perusal, of the miscellaneous literature of the age; but a book, written with ever so much talent and authenticity, which contains facts relating to the in-comings and out-goings of human existence, and to the rise and fall in the tide of human welfare,-matters which concern and affect every member of society,-is too dry and statistical; it will not interest; "we hav'n't time to examine it!" An individual can announce that he sells a patent medicine, which is alleged to be a cure for all diseases, and even those supposed to be incurable; and, by a systematic puffing, he will command the public ear and amass a fortune by drafts upon public credulity; but the man who announces, in plain and simple terms, a wise and truthful plan for avoiding disfor living without sickness and without medicines, will be regarded with indifference, and informed that "the people

ease,

"it

are not up to it yet." A lecturer can announce a new system of medicine, "electro-biological" or otherwise, and attract crowds of attentive listeners, night after night; but if an earnest, thoughtful, honest man, presents the simple, everyday, unvarnished principles, by which disease may be avoided and the causes of disease removed, and the facts by which these principles are demonstrated, he will find few listeners, and even those whom he is fortunate enough to obtain, may pronounce him unworthy of confidence,-a visionary dreamer.

The upsetting of a pleasure-boat, drowning several persons; a shipwreck, consigning human life to a watery grave; the bursting of a steam-boiler, scalding and scattering those within its reach; a collision on a railroad, mangling or destroying the passengers; a fire, murder, suicide, or other sudden and sad calamity, will sometimes occur and produce a general public excitement. All the facts are gathered together and minutely detailed in the newspapers; people collect in the streets, and in public and private coteries, to talk the matter over; a strong sympathy is manifested for the sufferers; judgment is immediately pronounced upon the guilty; and a loud call is made for such a punishment as shall be a warning against a repetition of the offence. But the dark stream of disease and death, is every day and every hour crowded with victims, carried down upon its everflowing current beyond the limits of time, and all are unmoved and without emotion or excitement. The people "hav'n't time to consider it ;" and make no attempt to arrest or lessen the amount of disease and death that constantly float, in their onward course, on these dark waters. They never ask the question, Can this mortal current be stayed, the number of these victims lessened, the amount of this human wretchedness and human woe mitigated or prevented? And even when informed, in a demonstration as clear as meridian light, that it may be done, they make no effort to do it, and reply, "We are not up to it yet; you are before your time; you were born in an age too soon!"

Here we might rest our labors; but we cannot close our report without a few words of appeal which our subject suggests.

1. It appeals to Physicians. "The members of our profes sion," says an eminent medical authority, "who have already embarked in this most righteous crusade against physical corruption, cannot but feel themselves encouraged and supported by the sympathy and coöperation of the clergy; and those who have not yet taken any part in furtherance of the sanitary cause, may perhaps find a motive to exertion in the growing interest with which it is regarded by the members of other professions, and by society at large. But a sense of duty, far more than the mere force of example, ought to enlist the medical man in this holy warfare. No member of society is so cognizant as he is of the facts of the case, or better prepared to interpret and enforce them; no one is less open to the sus picion of mean or unworthy motives; and no one has such frequent opportunities of converse with men of every rank and degree. If he, who knows so much, should appear indifferent, or, what is worse,-from the bad habit of looking at the routine practice of his profession as the only honorable occupation of a medical man, and the work of palliation as his only duty,-should speak slightingly of this higher work of prevention, and carp at the efforts of others on the pretence that they are given to exaggeration; society would soon catch his tone of thought and feeling; and a cause which, on serious reflection and careful examination, he would be constrained to support, must suffer irreparable injury. If, on the other hand, he could be induced to exert himself heartily, but discreetly, in favor of sanitary measures, and to bring his influence to bear on those with whom his professional avocations place him in communication, it is impossible to over-estimate the good he be the means of effecting." may

2. It appeals to Clergymen. Their official duties lead them to visit the sick and the dying; and they should be forcibly impressed with the truth that the architect and the scavenger,― that sanitary reforms in their various modes of operation,-are their best colleagues. They should see and feel, that removing physical suffering and raising the social and personal condition of the sufferer, is the surest way of gaining access to the

1 British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. I, for 1848, p. 32.